Present Practice Yoga

Background

In preparation for the launch of 2026 retreat offerings, the owners of Present Practice reorganized their internal operations and systems after 1 year in business. As part of those efforts, they acknowledged the need to improve risk mitigation measures due to the inherently risk nature of (i) physical services; and (ii) international travel offerings.

My Role

I led the operational design work for their contracts (eg: Waivers of Liability), Terms and Conditions / Privacy Policy, internal policy alignment, and in-product risk mitigation.

What I Did

• Reworked the Waiver of Liability signed by all retreat participants from scratch, notably introducing key provisions such as:

  • Right of Publicity

  • Health & Medical Responsibility

  • Indemnification

• Reworked the Terms and Conditions (“T&C”) page on the primary website from scratch, making novel improvements such as:

  • Extending scope of the T&C to cover use of the site and their Services

  • Introducing a variety of provisions for added company protection

  • Introducing a series of provisions clarifying internal policies around attendance, cancellations, payment, refunds, etc. for both (i) user transparency; and (ii) use as a centralized source of truth on policy for staff

• Developed a legal language reference guide and agreement map to ensure that all users of various services are guaranteed to have been asked to review relevant terms and that a consistent voice is used throughout (reducing duplication of terms and unnecessary user friction)

Unique Outcomes

• These improvements dramatically improved Present Practice’s risk profile, offering stronger and, in many cases, new protections for key risks to the business

• All user-facing documents were designed with ease of understanding in mind, and built in close collaboration with the owners of Present Practice to ensure the voice fits their brand

• Discussion with the owners on key details led to various other operational improvements, such as cleaning up contact aliases, payment policy & communication, and contract management / version control

Learnings

• While benchmarking Present Practice’s protections against comparable competitors, it became evident that risk mitigation is a fairly common blind spot for this entire industry, representing rich consultative opportunity

• Legal operations and consultation is more valuable and relevant to other critical operations functions of small businesses than ever, and business-savvy legal experts like myself have unique value to offer small business owners